Today’s dairy farm is a far cry from what ads and movies would have you believe. Cows go to robotic milking stations on their own, where they are identified, milked, and sent back out to the barn until the next milking. Sam Grobart visited Sunny Glade Farm where robots handle most of the work and the cows like it just fine.

Long-anticipated rules proposed Sunday will open an era in which small (under 55 pounds) commercial unmanned aircraft perform routine tasks — crop monitoring, aerial photography, inspections of bridges and cell towers, and much more. But not right away.

The future of automation is inextricably tied to the rise of Why IP. That reality has been recognized by leaders around the world, including those in private industry, academia and government, who have formed initiatives to accelerate the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.

The e-commerce giant boasts that it has boosted efficiency — and given workers' legs a break — by deploying more than 15,000 wheeled robots to crisscross the floors of its biggest warehouses and deliver stacks of toys, books and other products to employees.

RMT Robotics, a Cimcorp Oy company that manufactures and integrates robotic gantry-based order fulfillment and tire handling solutions, has announced that it has joined the Muratec Group as part of the acquisition of Cimcorp Oy (Cimcorp) and its subsidiaries by Kyoto, Japan-based Murata Machinery, Ltd. (Muratec).

Consumer mobile devices are proliferating in the commercial sector. But in the industrial sector, their use has been limited to remote diagnostics and maintenance visualization in SCADA solutions — so far.

As industrial robots become smarter, faster, more affordable, and develop advanced capabilities such as sensing, dexterity, memory and trainability, industrial manufacturers across industries are looking to advanced robotics to gain a competitive business advantage.

The costs and inefficiencies of paper forms are no longer lost on manufacturing businesses that are ramping up efforts to shift paper forms and manual processes to mobile apps — and to integrate mobility with key business processes.

Rethink Robotics thinks its latest creation, Baxter, will redefine how robotics are used in manufacturing. It can be trained to perform more delicate operations. Find out how the makers envisage it being used in the workplace.